Retiring head of OGIS hails FOIA portal a success

The retiring chief of the agency that acts as an ombudsman for federal Freedom of Information Act requests pointed to FOIAonline as a major agency achievement Friday.

“To say it’s a success is not overstating things,” said Miriam Nisbet, founding director of the Office of Government Information Services, at a panel celebrating the creation of the agency five years ago.

FOIAonline is a platform that allows users to submit Freedom of Information requests to certain agencies. Created out of a collaboration between OGIS, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commerce Department two years ago, the system tracks requests and provides a repository of previously released records. Nisbet said the portal now hosts 120,000 users accounts and has 12 partner agencies, including the U.S. Navy. Continue>>>

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